Florida Governor lashes out at Petro 1:41
(CNN) —
Fifteen minutes into a recent Sunday Mass, a man in a smart pinstripe suit with combed white hair and a blue disposable mask walked to the front row of The Fountain Church and began nodding to the rhythm of a live and loud contemporary gospel band.
"Is that Charlie Christ?"
whispered Virginia McNair, a local retiree, from a few rows back in this predominantly black church.
"My favorite."
It was Charlie Crist, that enduring and instantly recognizable enigma of Florida politics, in his element: the campaign.
At 65, Crist, currently serving his third term in the US House of Representatives, is running for governor, a job he first won in 2006 as a Republican, leaving after losing a race for the US Senate in 2010 as an independent, and failed to win again in 2014 as a Democrat.
And he does it the only way he knows how: by trying to shake hands with everyone in the state.
In 36 hours, he has attended church service, spoken with parents of children killed by gun violence, met with Nicaraguan refugees, had lunch with Haitian-American Democrats and toured Cuban-American businesses in Little Havana with his new fiancée.
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Democrats in Florida, completely shut out of state government for more than two decades, are desperate for power to stem the state's lurch to the right, but they're up against a fundraising juggernaut and a rising Republican star: Mr. Governor Ron DeSantis.
Meanwhile, the country is bitter against President Joe Biden and some Democratic candidates are distancing themselves from their standard-bearer heading into the midterm elections.
Crist, however, not only welcomes Biden with open arms, but channels the president's campaign playbook.
Like Biden in 2020, he is running to restore civility, a gamble that enough independent and moderate Republican voters are exhausted by the divisive politics of the Republican administration in power.
Crist plays on his bipartisan background, at times even leaning on his Republican roots, in hopes that voters will rally around a familiar face with a work history across the aisle.
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A year ago, Crist's entry into the race was met with a sigh from many state Democrats ready for younger blood and new faces.
But as mail-in ballots for the Aug. 23 primary election go out in many Florida counties, party forces have coalesced around Crist's strategy.
With the primary about five weeks away, Crist has built a solid fundraising lead and is endorsed by more than 100 Democratic elected officials and backed by unions and progressive leaders alike.
Crist launched his first state campaign ad on Thursday focused on DeSantis, not his main opponent in the primary, State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.
In another sign, as Crist prepares for the general election, her campaign has booked eight figures of media airtime for the fall, CNN has learned.
"Whoever has the best shot is who we have to nominate," said state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat and LGBT leader from Orlando who endorsed Crist last month.
"The stakes are too high."
Biden framed the 2020 race as a "battle for the soul of America."
Crist, who has mentioned the Golden Rule at campaign rallies for more than a decade, framed the race as "not right versus left, it's good versus evil."
"There is a similarity, of course," Crist told CNN.
"Good experience, loving heart. I think people are hungry for that."
"But I'm from Florida," he added.
"And, God bless the president, but he's from Delaware."
Thomas Kennedy, a Miami activist and Democratic National Committee member known for disrupting DeSantis events, said he thinks Crist is a good foil for DeSantis, a conservative favorite who has brought former President Donald Trump's confrontational style to Tallahassee.
"People are tired of toxicity and partisanship," Kennedy said at the event where Crist promised to help Nicaraguan immigrants gain temporary protected status to stay in the United States.
"There is so much pettiness in the state right now. It's similar to Biden."
Not everyone is on board.
Fried, the only Democrat holding elected office in the entire state, has built her campaign around the promise of "Something New."
Her allies are quick to point out that Crist, as a Democratic candidate in 2014, was unable to beat then-Governor Rick Scott and that while Biden's strategy proved successful in his 2020 race, he lost Florida to Trump by a sizable margin. .
Meanwhile, Fried won office four years ago in a cycle in which every other Democrat running statewide lost.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result, and our party has a history of that insanity,” said Evan Ross, a Democratic consultant and Fried supporter with deep ties to South Florida's large Jewish community.
"Charlie Crist would be the pinnacle. If we're crazy enough to nominate him, I think he'll be one of our worst losses in state history."
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Crist dismissed 2014 as a bad year for Democrats everywhere.
He noted that he lost the race by less than 1 percentage point and has since outscored the top Democratic ticket three times en route to winning his Tampa Bay-area House seat.
Crist's advisers also promised a strong campaign from Democrats this year, unlike in 2020, when Democrats acknowledge Biden was more focused on other battleground states.
When asked what he learned from his latest state loss, Crist responded, "Go further north than Florida."
But even some Crist supporters wonder if his brand of politics can win a head-to-head battle against DeSantis, who is seeking a landslide victory to bolster his résumé ahead of a possible 2024 presidential run.
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"All of Charlie's success was being nice. And that works until it stops working. Republicans don't play games," said John Morgan, an Orlando attorney and a longtime friend of Crist's.
"There isn't a bad bone in Charlie's body. DeSantis is a brawler with brass knuckles in one hand and a knife in the other."
CNN has reached out to the DeSantis campaign for comment.
Retail Policy 101
The Saturday before his church appearance, Crist donned a traditional Cuban guayabera and walked the festive streets of Miami's Little Havana wide-eyed and curious, despite being an iconic stop for past campaigns in Florida, including yours.
A Cuban band had serenaded him and Arizona Sen. John McCain there in 2006. He paraded in a convertible in 2007. He opened a campaign office there in 2014.
Inside a Cuban coffee shop, Crist watched a worker roast beans and then introduced himself to customers, including Matt Granat, a graphic designer from Palm Beach Gardens, who had identified the former governor from across the room.
Out of earshot of Crist, Granat told CNN that he was leaning towards voting for Fried.
Crist and his fiancée, Chelcee Grimes, watch coffee beans being roasted at La Colada Gourmet in Little Havana in Miami on July 9, 2022.
“She strikes me as someone who has been a rock in DeSantis's shoe,” Granat said.
"She changed parties, so I'm not sure about him."
Ten minutes later, Crist returned after meeting a dozen people and handed Granat a bumper sticker.
"Matt, I want you to have this."
Granat looked impressed: "Wow, he remembered my name."
"You need ID with your name on it to do this in a state this size," Crist later told CNN.
"It's hard to be recognized unless you've done what I did."
As Crist leans on old connections and a personal touch, Fried has built an online following through late-night Twitter chats with his audience, carefully edited videos highlighting Crist's Republican past and capturing viral moments on the campaign trail. .
The two will debate for the first and only time on July 21.
"Charlie has been doing this for 30 years. He has relationships that go back decades," Fried said.
"And a lot of my relationships are newer and people know that I'm not a typical Democrat, which means I stand for things differently, I speak differently and I don't play with internal party politics. And unfortunately that's what What Charlie does. I don't play. He offers positions to people, he makes deals, and I'm not willing to do that."
Crist reacts after trying an iced coffee drink at La Colada Gourmet in Miami on July 9, 2022.
Fried has seized on Democratic outrage over the US Supreme Court's stripping of the federal right to abortion to fuel a campaign that has been beset by staff reshuffles, lackluster fundraising and an ethics complaint over disclosures. of previous income.
She said that as a woman, she is in a unique position to capture this wave of reinvigorated energy from Democratic voters.
"I'm talking to a lot of women from all over the state," Fried said.
"They all turned to me with a collective voice, saying, 'You have to win, you are our protector and our fighter.'"
Crist, meanwhile, has a complicated and conflicted history about abortion.
He has called himself "pro-life" in the past.
He explained to a Florida television station earlier this year: "I'm still pro-life, which means I'm for life. I hope most people are."
He recently said he regretted appointing a couple of justices to the state Supreme Court who have failed to uphold restrictions on abortion.
Yet Crist has been a reliable vote for abortion rights in the House of Representatives, drawing endorsements from Barbara Zdravecky, former CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, and Alex Sink, former CFO-elect. of the state who founded an organization that recruits and trains Democratic women who support abortion rights to run for public office.
"I just think he's certainly better equipped to be governor and do the things that we need him to do," said Sink, who lost a bid to succeed Crist as governor in 2010. "But he's also better equipped to win and raise the money to wage the fight against DeSantis.
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State Rep. Anna Eskamani, an outspoken advocate for abortion rights, publicly dismissed Crist's gubernatorial bid when she first announced it in May last year, tepidly calling him "better than DeSantis."
But Crist worked to convince her of her progressive good faith.
They organized events together to oppose a state bill that would limit residential solar power and to fight DeSantis's tax policies.
Eskamani was surprised at how many people who showed up knew Crist.
"That identifying name of course can trigger different emotions, there's trust there and it reminds me of Joe Biden," he said.
"I definitely didn't predict we'd be there, but this is Florida."
Leaning on black voters
Like Biden, Crist's campaign is confident that his familiarity with black Floridians will carry him through the primary.
Black voters make up 30% of registered Democrats in the state and have been instrumental in determining the party's nominee in past elections.
Despite earning the nickname "Chain Gang Charlie" for championing the return of prison chain gangs as a state senator in the 1990s, Crist has built enduring connections with African-American and Caribbean state leaders.
At lunch with Haitian-American Democrats, state Rep. Marie Paule Woodson, who was born in Haiti, threw her weight behind Crist and laid out the stakes for November.
Crist places campaign stickers around a table before the Broward Haitian American Democratic Club luncheon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on July 10, 2022.
"If you don't wake up and help Charlie be the next governor, every single one of you will be sitting in the back of the bus," he said.
Crist supports the legalization and decriminalization of marijuana and has promised to restore voting rights to felons who have served their sentences.
But as he positions himself for the general election, Crist has also sought to distance himself from some of his party's more divisive left-wing rhetoric about policing.
At a breakfast hosted by Florida Parents of Murdered Children, a predominantly black advocacy group for families of homicide victims, Crist received an unexpected turn at the lectern, when he called out to the room to acknowledge a table of police officers.
He promised as governor to commit funds to law enforcement to stop "these horrible crimes that are happening all over our country."
"We know that sometimes, you know, weird things have happened in law enforcement like in Minneapolis and George Floyd, but you're good," Crist told the table.
"You are good".
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Aramis Ayala, Florida's first black state attorney and the event's keynote speaker, seemed surprised by Crist's comments.
Ayala, who earned a reputation as a reformer, once published a list of agents she could not be trusted to testify in criminal cases.
During her turn at the microphone, she denounced the "mass incarceration of black and brown people."
By then, Crist was on his way to her next event.
Asked by CNN about Crist's comments, Ayala, who is running for Florida attorney general, said, "Each person has to have their own message. If they're the governor, they have to explain what they're going to do and I have to explain what they're going to do." what would I do".
He declined to say which Democratic candidate he intends to vote for in August.
Fried has earned the endorsements of the Florida Democratic Black Caucus and the Florida College Democrats, indicating his campaign has gained a foothold in the party's grassroots.
Camara Williams, a Florida attorney and community organizer, recently featured both candidates on her Black politics and culture podcast.
She told CNN that she wasn't impressed by Crist's one-liners and thought the Democrat was relying on an old-fashioned mindset to get black voters to the polls.
Crist said she would bring former President Barack Obama to campaign for him.
When Williams suggested that some black voters think DeSantis has helped their economic position by keeping businesses open through most of the pandemic, Crist scoffed.
“Doubtful,” Crist said.
"Not for you."
"I've heard black voters say that," Williams responded.
"That's crazy, man," Crist replied.
He finally cut the interview shorter than the requested time.
Last week Williams endorsed Fried.
The two clicked during a bizarre 70-minute interview that touched on black farming, generational wealth, and marijuana politics.
In an interview last month with CNN, Williams said she felt Crist lacked authenticity and that she was underestimating DeSantis.
“He may have a dear place in the hearts of some African-American voters, but if you think that's going to bring tailwinds to get people interested in your campaign, you're wrong,” Williams said.
"DeSantis will do a good job of messaging a certain section of Black voters because of the economy. That needs to be addressed."
Crist shrugged off the criticism.
Black voters know him, he insisted.
"I'm sorry you feel that way," Crist said of Williams.
She has the right to comment.
But she doesn't know me."
US ElectionsUS Primary ElectionsFloridaRon DeSantis